Empowering Young People as Promoters (WS)

Young people need opportunities to develop skills, and when adequately directed can easily and effectively support organisational work without a lot of experience. Environmental programmes should try to involve young people as promoters basically because they have a lot of extra time and energy — and are tremendously creative. In this media age, young people have access to tremendous amounts of information that can sometimes be overwhelming (using internet based social networks, for example), but they really do not know what to do with all of it.

Young people are prepared to take risks in confronting conventional structures. They are a sector of society that will be able to assure sustainability. Precisely because they are inheriting a world, they know that the world is complicated and it will affect them. Indeed, young people are often more sensitive and intuitive than many adults, which can give them and almost instinctive sense of what will work or not and where a program should be directed.

 “One way to make sure change lasts is to work with young people, because they will take what they learn into the future. Each of us, no matter what age we are, can adopt the attitude of a young person to always be willing to learn and try new things” (CONANT et al. 2008).

If and when youth do want to get involved in social and environmental programmes and movements, the traditional leaders and decision makers are frequently threatened by them and prefer not to involve them in their plans. Although this resistance is partly due to a lack of tools on how to involve them, it is frequently also due to a basic lack of understanding. Adults treat youth as adults — which they are not! — so their methods to involve them tend to fail; thus making it more likely that the programme strategies and activities will not be accepted by the youth.

To prepare young participants for advocacy requires awareness building, training, and skills transfer from specialists in a number of key areas including:

• Internet-based social networks
• Policy aspects of the right to water and the right to sanitation
• Social justice and equity
• Rhetoric and debating skills
• Decision-making and group facilitation tools
• Marketing skills
• Environmental health
• Problems related to water and sanitation

Important tools used by youth to promote water-related issues include: door-to-door campaigns, water forums and brigades, school environmental groups, art contests, online and printed publications, educational radio and theatre shows, concerts, amongst others. Other information tools provide support on how they let other people know what their accomplishments are. This includes how they choose to generate their messages, and allowing them to be protagonists of change amongst school and community authorities.

Young people are empowered by knowing that they have the capacity to influence change, i.e., if they can see what they achieve. In the case of water quality, for example, it is useful for them to identify that their actions can directly influence the quality of water that they consume, e.g. by measuring the water quality or researching improvements in health or biodiversity. Therefore, any action plan to deal with the prioritised and analysed issue should be geared towards attaining small, reachable goals. An attitude of not pointing out errors, but rather finding more about the goal they set in their action plan, is a way of promoting the change they want to see.

By forming or joining existing youth networks, as well as maintaining contact, young people are also empowered. But when at a teenage stage, and if coming from needy or poor communities, they may have a demand on them to contribute to the family economy. Committed youth groups can begin to break down under external life pressures, including both economic and family demands. Romantic involvement and pregnancy can have a heavy toll on the best of intentions. This is why it is important to think through and put in place strategies for maintaining the involvement of motivated youth over the long haul. For example, considering introducing small stipends for the more mature and experienced youth, as a transition from purely voluntary work; access to training, stimulus attached to internet and media, and certification can also be important incentives.

Cultivating an understanding of global perspectives and of international development issues is of special relevance to any environmental youth educational program. It is the young people that day to day play a more transcendental role in any country’s economic, political, cultural, academic and social activities. By allowing them to take ownership of different means of expression, and in as much as they receive support from different civil and governmental groups, they will be influential in supporting the sustainability agenda (KURI et al. 2006).